'You still need to be respected': Transgender kids in B.C. face rough rideGORDON MCINTYRE, THE PROVINCE, SEPTEMBER 4, 2013
With all the anti-bullying rhetoric out there, the last people you expect to pick on your child are teachers and school officials.
But that's what a couple of families with transgender children feel happened to their kids.
Ladner mom Michelle Wilson's son Trey became her daughter Tracey at nine years old, something the board of the private religious school Tracey attended was not prepared to accommodate.
"The current state of the board is they don't believe God plans for you to change genders, He doesn't make mistakes, that's the loose wording," Wilson said. "The Human Rights Code says you can't discriminate based on sex, which includes gender."
Granted, freedom of religion is also encoded as a basic right.
"But you still need to be respected," Wilson said. "A child who is transgender is already going through trauma, being forced to live a role that is not them."
Trey never acted like a boy, playing with dolls and dressing up as a fairy princess instead of rambunctiously crashing toy cars into each other.
There is a case pending before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal between the Wilson family and the school board, scheduled for the spring.
